


Last Night

by Emma_Wolf



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-06
Updated: 2015-07-06
Packaged: 2018-04-07 22:53:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4280970
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emma_Wolf/pseuds/Emma_Wolf
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After Emma becomes the Dark One, she and Killian go to hide the Dark One's dagger from anyone that might want to control her. Killian wonders how long they have before Emma turns completely Dark and if he will be strong enough to find a part of Emma trapped in the Darkness.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Last Night

At the mayor's office, the five of them met and puzzled over the dagger on the coffee table. David sat next to Mary Margaret on a small sofa, his hands holding hers on her lap. She looked grim. Regina leaned back against her desk sneering at the dagger as though it would be intimidated by her stare. Killian paced, his good hand fidgeting with the clasps of his coat.

Only Emma seemed undisturbed. “I don’t get it. What’s the big deal? That dagger can’t make me _be_ evil, right? It just gives me power. It doesn’t mean I’m _going_ to be evil.” She sat on Regina's office chair and twirled herself in circles.

“Power corrupts, Love,” Killian said as he placed his hand on his knee to stop her spinning. “And you’re making me dizzy.”

“Ok, but thanks to dear old mom and dad pulling the old switch-a-roo, aren’t I incorruptible or something?” Of course, she wasn’t pleased by what they had done, but knowing that she had that protection made her feel a bit relieved. Like she wasn’t at risk of going full Rumplestiltskin. But then if she thought she could see the benefit of hurting someone else, maybe she was turning Dark. It was all very confusing and made her want to spin. She ignored Killian’s hand and kicked the ground.

“I don’t think it works that way,” Mary Margaret said tonelessly. “The Apprentice said it was up to us to keep you on the Light path. It’s not proof against Darkness.”

Emma snorted a laugh. “Then what did you even do it for if I could turn Dark anyway?”

Mary Margaret looked as though Emma had hit her. “We’re sorry...” she began in a cracking voice.

David put a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “What’s in the past is in the past. Rehashing that won’t help protect your heart from corruption.”

“And that’s not our only problem,” Regina said in her usual pessimistic way.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean whoever controls that dagger controls Emma.”

Mary Margaret backed away from the dagger as if she were afraid it would attack them all. “What if we destroy it?”

Emma scoffed. “How? In the fires of Mount Doom?”

Regina shook her head. “How’s not the problem. And destroying the dagger will destroy the Dark One. Not just the power. Emma too.”

David breathed out a long frustrated sigh. “What are our options?”

“We have to hide it.”

Killian marched to the table and took the dagger in his hand. “I’ll do that. It’s there anyone who knows about hiding things, it’s a pirate.”

“It’s well and good to find a good hiding place,” Regina said. “But you’ll also need magic to protect it. I’ll come with you to seal it. Mary Margaret, David, why don’t you go and see to the Apprentice? Maybe he’ll be up for questioning soon.”

Mary Margaret stood up. “No.” Her voice was tense and clipped. “There are people in this town with greater magic than yours.”

Regina looked offended. “The Apprentice and Gold are both...”

“I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about Emma. And who knows who might come into town who could over power you? The Headless Horseman? Lilith? Or God forbid that little matchstick girl comes nosing around.”

“Seriously?” Emma asked. She was never sure what was real in dealing with magic and who the real baddies were. Storybrooke came with a steep learning curve, and every time she thought she had seen it all, the town found a way to take her by surprise.

“The Dark One is more powerful than all of them. Even you.” Mary Margaret looked at Regina apologetically. “No offense, your Majesty.”

Regina crossed her arms over her chest. “So what do you suggest?”

“Go home. Explain what’s going on to Henry. Help him handle this. David and I will consult with the Blue Fairy. We’ll check in on the Apprentice too. We’ll also talk to Belle. Ask her to search the library, just for the sake of completeness.”

“Let me talk to Henry!” Emma almost whined. “He’s my son too.”

Mary Margaret bit her lip, not wanting to say that she wasn’t sure she trusted Emma. “No, you need to hide the dagger. That’s what’s most important now. Henry will understand. It needs to be done before...” She couldn’t bring herself to complete her thought.

“I’ll send word to King Triton,” Killian said. “He had something to help me defeat the Dark One before. Maybe he knows something that can help us now.”

“We’ll contact King Triton,” Mary Margaret offered. “You go with Emma. Help her find a good hiding place.”

Killian looked uneasy. He was not used to Emma’s parents seeming to want them to spend time alone together. To make matters worse, David approached him. “Good luck,” he said, and clapped him on the shoulder. “Mate,” he added grudgingly.

Regina cleared her throat and broke the awkward spell that fell. “Right. I’ll go talk to Henry.” She turned to Mary Margaret. “And if you want to bring Neal by, I can watch him while you chase after fairies, mermaids, and errant librarians. I still have some of Henry’s old things I can set up for Neal.”

Mary Margaret was stunned into silence. She loved being a mother and being able to be there for her baby. At almost one year, Neal was not so much a baby anymore. For that year, she had been there as much as she possibly could, but Storybrooke needed her too. She had missed so much with Emma that she had promised herself that she wouldn’t miss a second with Neal. But that was impossible. She saw Regina then realizing, for the first time since she was a child, that she was a mother too and, shockingly, that she trusted her with her baby. Finally, she swallowed and stammered out a “thank you.”

Then she turned to Emma. She put her hands on her daughter’s shoulders. “I don’t know how much time we have left.”

Emma looked like an embarrassed teenager. “Come on, Mom...” she groaned.

“I don’t know what will happen when the Darkness takes over you. I don’t know how much of Emma will be left. But the time until then is my gift to you.” Her eyes darted over to Killian who was poring over a map of Storybrooke. “Make the most of it.” She kissed Emma on the forehead, grabbed David’s hand, and left.

Emma stood there for another moment wondering at what her mother had meant. She closed her eyes and reached inside herself, trying to feel her soul or her heart. Would she know when it became Dark?

“Ready, Love?” Killian asked.

She nodded. “Lead the way.”

Killian took her hand and lead her down to the docks. “The safest place for it is probably aboard the _Jolly Roger_.”

“Your boat?”

“Ship.”

“Whatever. Isn’t that the first place people will look?”

Killian shrugged. “Where people look doesn’t matter. It matters that they won’t find it. I’ve already got protections against intruders and ways to cloak it on board.”

They walked the rest of the way in silence until Emma stopped in her tracks at the mooring. She stared up at the ship. “It feels...magic here,” she said, unable to find the right word to describe it. “There’s something familiar about it.”

“You’ve been aboard the _Jolly Roger_ before, Love,” he said, reminding her.

“It’s not that.” She shook her head as though coming out of a dream and waved her hand through the air. The ship vanished. Emma stared at where the ship once stood in shock. She didn’t know she had the power to do that.

“Cora’s old cloaking spell.” There was a hint of bitterness in Killian’s voice. “Rumpelstiltskin taught her everything she knew.”

Emma frowned. “Not Rumpelstiltskin. The Dark One.”

“Aye.”

Emma reached her hand out for Killian’s hook. “I remember,” she whispered as the turned it over in her hands. “It wasn’t me, but I have the memory. It’s like a dream or a story I once heard. I know I wasn’t there, but it feels like I was.” She brushed the tips of her fingers over his tattoo and swallowed nervously. “I remember killing Milah.”

She dared to steal a glance into his eyes. They held pain, confusion, anger, and, most puzzling of all, love.

“Sorry,” she said, dropping his hook and looking away. She raked her hands through her hair. “I feel like I have two people living in my head. I don’t know how anyone can stand it.”

Killian reached out to her and put his hand on her shoulder, but she shook it off. “I know it wasn’t you.”

“How much longer do we have?”

“What do you mean?”

“Before I become ‘the Dark One?’ Evil through and through?”

“You won’t be.” Killian thought back to Belle. She had seen the good in Rumpelstiltskin when no one else could. He remembered meeting her in Regina’s tower. He had thought she was weak for falling in love with the Dark One. Maybe now he understood. It wasn’t weakness but a great measure of strength. “There will always be you buried inside.” He didn’t know if he could be as strong as Belle, but he could try.

Emma nodded. She wanted to collapse into him, to let Killian’s strong arms hold her together, but she knew they had a mission first. Operation Dagger or something. She could still see the ship through the spell and she stepped aboard, leading Killian behind her. “Ok, so where should we hide it?”

Killian went to his quarters and opened a dresser drawer.

“You want to hide it in your underwear drawer?” Emma asked skeptically. “Come on. That’s where all the kids in the group homes hid their diaries. Trust me, that’s the first place people will look. There or under the mattress with the porn.”

“Well, no one found this yet,” he said as he pulled out a small vial half full of a clear liquid. “Alice’s tears. From Wonderland.”

An endless stream of questions came to Emma's mind, but she forced herself to let go and trust him. Awkwardly, Killian uncorked the small vial with his teeth.

“Wait,” Emma said. “Give me your...hook.”

He looked at her uncertainly. “What is it, Love?”

“Just trust me.”

Killian put his wounded arm in Emma’s outstretched hands.

“The Dark One taketh away, the Dark One return...eth,” Emma said with a sly grin. She waved a hand over Killian’s stump, and his own hand reappeared.

He tested it out, turning it over and extending his fingers. He reached out and stroked Emma’s face. He fought with his emotions—love of Emma, love of Milah, anger, hatred of the Dark One, and fear. It would be easier to just complete their task than to face what he was feeling. “Show me the dagger.”

Emma held it out to him. He let a drop from the vial fall onto the blade, and the dagger shrunk until it was no larger than a toothpick. She stared at it wordlessly.

From atop of his dresser Killian found a reel of twine. He cut a length from it and wound it around the hilt of the shrunken blade. “Turn around.”

Emma turned, and Killian strung the dagger around her neck like a piece of jewelry. “There. Hidden in plain sight. You might want to put your own cloaking spell on it, like Regina suggested.”

She touched the shrunken dagger where it fell between her breasts. “You’re brilliant. Thanks!” She turned around again to face Killian and kissed him on the cheek. She remembered the feeling she got when she saw the _Jolly Roger_ a few minutes ago and tried to put that energy into the shrunken dagger. She touched it again, and it disappeared.

Killian looked down and rubbed his wrist uneasily.

She took both his hands her hers. “Hey, it’s still me. At least it is for a little while more.”

Killian sighed. “Belle was able to see Rumpelstiltskin in the Dark One, though who knows what she saw in Rumpelstiltskin himself. But I don’t know if I’m as strong or as smart as her.”

“I’m here too,” Emma pleaded. “I’m still fighting. Rumpelstiltskin became the Dark One for power. I did it as a sacrifice. That’s got to count for something, right?”

He shrugged. “I know nothing of how this Dark magic works,” he said, but he knew he sounded more petulant than reasoned. He wondered if he was looking for an excuse to distance himself from Emma. Was he too afraid to find out he wasn’t as strong as Belle?

“Before we left, Mary Margaret told me to make the most of this. This could be our last night together, Killian. Do you want to spend it brooding on what _might_ happen? How you _might_ see me? Or do you want to practice being strong?”

Without waiting for an answer, Emma pulled on Killian’s hand, leading him to his bed. On her knees on his bed, she laced her fingers through his, enjoying the feel of holding both his hands in hers. She buried her face in his chest, breathing him in as though this would be their last time together.

“Give us the memory of one last night together. Give us something to hold on to and keep us strong—keep me _me_ —when the Darkness comes.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm kind of fascinated by the idea of Rumpelstiltskin being a combination of different people--the spinner, the Dark One, the seer, Mr. Gold. This story kind of played on that for Emma, treating the Dark One as its own person or a possessing force.
> 
> It was very hard for me to not have Emma start singing "Alice? Who the fuck is Alice?"


End file.
